Sunday, 20 July 2014

Like most beginners I suppose I’m a bit wary of
committing money to anything before I have a good idea of how it all comes
together. When I’ve scoured other people’s blogs and forum posts I’ve often
been inspired but left wondering how they did it. In some cases a quick email
brings back an answer, but for the times when you have fifteen minutes to kill
on the train or waiting to board your delayed Virgin flight – again – having that
info a google search away can make some of that armchair modelling time a
little more useful. To that end, this post is heavy on detail and light on
photos. If you’re in a similar
predicament, feel free to comment below and I’ll try to answer as best I can.

So, the lighting.

As mentioned in previous posts, I bought a roll of Warm
White 5M SMD 3528 LED Flexible Strip Lights and Cool White 5M SMD 3528 600 LED
Car Flexible Strip Light from China via eBay, as well as a 12V 6AMP power pack and a
2.1mm screw terminal connector.

This thread on layout lighting was a really good
source of info and if you ever read this Linton, I appreciate your time posting
it in the first place.

The LED strip is about 8.5mm wide, so I spent an
entire day trying to find an appropriately sized dovetail bit - most of the ones I found were 10mm wide and over. In the end Part
no H1012 from Carbitool (7.1mm dovetail router bit – catalogue available here)
was backordered from the local tool shop.

I routed a test piece of timber (above) to get an idea of how to
use the tool and found that after the first cut I needed to make a second to
widen the gap by another millimetre or so. The timber used to for both the support
for the LED strips and the lighting timbers was 12mm x 65mm pine from Bunnings.
After the grooves were cut with the router, I attached the lighting timber to
the supports using two 65mm butt hinges, also from Bunnings. The screws to hold
the hinges in are longer than the timbers, so they protrude through. On the lighting timber this protrusion will be covered by the pelmet,
but I need to figure out something for the top ones to prevent sticking it in my
fingers in future.

The LED strips were then laid out and squeezed to make them
rounder and easier to press into the grooves. The groove was a tad too tight to
drag the strip through, but pressing it in gently with a small flat screwdriver
worked a treat. I then cut the LED strip at each end across the copper joins as
marked on the strips.

To finish the electrical connection between the strips, I
boughtthese 2.1mm DC socket and plug with screw terminals from Jaycar.
I soldered the wires to the LED strip and covered them with 5mm heat shrink
tube (also from Jaycar) before attaching the other ends to the plug and socket.

Once all of this was test fit on the modules, and the electrical
connectivity tested, the supports were screwed to the module. Despite the urge
to press on and get the lighting in, it was easier to fiddle with the wiring still
be able to pull the whole system out to adjust or re-solder anything

The end result is:

The backscene was wrapped with bubblewrap right at the
beginning to protect it from any filings or inadvertent bumps that would ruin
or dent a very expensive part of the process. In short, a sanity preserver. It
will come off once I’ve finished the woodwork and painting. Running trains is
getting that much closer!